Review: Love & Rockets: The Covers

200 pages, full colour, bigger than A4 size, a collection of gorgeous covers, over 150 beautiful pieces, a collection that any coffee table would be proud of.

I’m not usually one for this sort of thing, I prefer my comics as comics, but then again, this is Love & Rockets, and I can think of no one who deserves this sort of lavish treatment more than Los Bros Hernadez. Frankly this is a review that doesn’t need much more than the title, a brief description of the insides, and then lots of the gorgeous artwork. The art sells itself frankly.

Inside you’ll find every front cover, every back cover, process work, commentary from Gilbert and Jamie (and Mario), and most importantly off all – every single front and back cover from 30 years of Love & Rockets, presented large, nearly all of them stripped of all cover noise, all the logos, and presented completely clean, nothing but the art, nothing but that gorgeous, wonderful artwork.

And what artwork it is, every single Love & Rockets cover, right from that iconic first issue… where five women gather for a line-up, four of them warriors, superheroes, vivid colours, garish costumes, punky attitude facing down the viewer. And yet the eye drifts into the centre, to the smallest woman, curlers in, dressing gown on. A perfect cover of contrasts from Jamie Hernandez, giving us a glimpse of what was truly going to be important in Love & Rockets…

Everyone involved in the making of this fabulous artbook deserves praise for producing something that looks and feels so damn good; editor Eric Reynolds, designer Jacob Covey and colour restorer Rich Tommaso should take particular big bows, as they’ve worked magic here to deliver a book that is an absolute delight to browse through, the recolouring of virtually all the covers to “improve fidelity” makes everything pop from the page yet still feels true to the original, and the overall design is clean and simple, focusing the eyes right where they should be, right on the Hernandez artwork.

Right then, enough from me, here’s just a glimpse of what to expect inside…

(L&R#1 Back Cover – Gilbert Hernandez)

L&R#2 front cover – Jamie Hernandez.

L&R #2 back cover – Gilbert Hernandez.

L&R #3 front cover – Gilbert Hernandez.

L&R # 4 back cover – Jamie Hernandez.

Finally a little note on the cover, a great little gimmick of putting the blacks on a transparent slip-on overlay that reveals the colour work underneath, a transformation that’s simply beautiful. It’s a special cover that adds to a little something extra to a wonderful book.

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About The Author

Richard Bruton- Started in comics retail aged 16 at Nostalgia & Comics, Birmingham. Now located in Yorkshire, he's written for the Forbidden Planet International Blog since 2007. Specialising in UK Comics and All-Ages comics, Richard's day job in a primary school allowed him to build the best children's graphic novel library in the country.